i have problems bringing up the sound on a ultra80! I've tried several tips posted in threads in the sparc forum but nothing seems to help!
I've compiled the cs4231 driver and the sparcaudiosupport as modules and excluded the soundcard options for normal pci cards, etc.
The modules can be loaded correctly and the /dev/sound/audio exists.
But trying to play a song with xmms, for example, just brings up some terrible noise out of the tower-internal speaker!

The only way I've been able to use the sound capabilities of my ultra 80 is by listening to cd's and plugging either my headphones or my external speakers into the audio out jack on the front of the cdrom drive.

Solaris offers a utility to choose which output the sound goes to (tower speaker or external speaker connected to the sound card) but I have found nothing comparable in linux.

You might try checking which device xmms is playing to... Seems like mine plays to /dev/adsp (on my intel box, the sparc isn't up yet), otherwise I can only have one application using the sound at the same time.

Or use something like aumix or alsamixer or something to turn the internal speaker volume down and turn up the volume for other output sources. Though I'm not sure if turning down the internal speaker is an issue, on the forums it has been sounding like the only way to change the speaker volume is by disconnecting it from the motherboard.

The internal speakers aren't great on the Ultras. In addition to looking into a mixer application, also check out the audioctl application that is already on your system (it's part of sparc-utils). It'll allow you to change what sound output you want to use as well as inputs.

Here are the only uncommented lines in my /etc/defaults/audioctl file:

PARAMS="play.port=line_out record.port=line_in"
DEVICE=/dev/audioctl

Is that correct?

Xmms is using its OSS driver for output. It complains if I leave it at the default paths for the audio device and the mixer. I tried setting those to /dev/audio and /dev/dsp and /dev/mixer all with the same results. Do I need OSS compiled into the kernel?

I'm not very knowledgeable about sound issues in linux. I really appreciate any help.

Google help me to figure out my problem!
I edited my audioctl file in /etc/defaults so that my standard device was /dev/audio/audioctl instead of /dev/audioctl.
Typing audioctl -a showed me several options and also some clues.
I had to type audioctl -w play.port=0x2 to set the headphones as the standard output (instead of play.port=0x1 which is the internal speaker) with the result that I now hear this terrible shrieking kind of noise through the speakers connected to the soundcard!

Yeah, typically I use esound as well so I can play more than one sound at a time.

As for audio CDs, I'd double check to see if you actually have the CD-ROM audio cable in your SPARC. In the couple I have here, this always seems to be missing.

As for arts, it does not like the sparc audio device in the 2.4 series for some reason. I've been keeping an eye on a bug KDE has open for it but no one from KDE seems terribly responsive about it. In the newer KDE (>=3.2.0), you can adjust arts to use different sound devices or engines, and you might try setting it to use esound and see if that helps.

The audiocable isn't pluged in! I've got no idea were to plug the cable since I couldn't find anything to plug it in on the mainboard - but I'll check that as soon as my machine stops compiling!
I do have Kde 3.2.1 running on my machine and I've already changed the sound device settings for arts but I doesn't work but I'll keep trying!

Last edited by Gecklord on Mon Apr 19, 2004 1:30 pm; edited 1 time in total

Yeah arts has been very problematic for me all around. It wasn't until I started using the 2.6 kernel that I got the sound to work (since the sound drivers in the 2.6 kernels are ALSA). I think this is probably related to whatever differences exist between the sparc audio drivers in 2.4 and the regular OSS support for PC sound cards.

However the driver in 2.6 for the ultrasparc workstations that use the cs4231 sound device doesn't seem to work quite right yet, so that won't help you much.